The bill has passed the state Assembly and is advancing in the state Senate, which is expected to take up the bill once it clears a final committee next month. Gov. Jerry Brown has set ambitious goals for zero-emissions vehicles; he hasn’t said whether he would sign this bill.

A $5,000 tax credit in Georgia helped the state become the second-largest electric vehicles market in the U.S. after California until the state tax credit was eliminated in July 2015, according to Edmunds, a website that tracks automotive sales. After the change, sales in Georgia fell to 2% of all U.S. electric vehicles sold in 2016 from 17% in 2014, according to the site.

Funds for the proposed rebate will come from existing programs, Mr. Ting said, with one source being the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires industry in California to pay for greenhouse gas emissions. That program faces a key test on Monday, with state lawmakers having scheduled a vote on whether to extend the program from 2020 through 2030.

All new cars sold in Europe will be electric within less than two decades, driven by government support, falling battery costs and economies of scale, a Dutch bank has predicted.

However, ING warned that with battery-powered vehicles accounting for 100% of registrations in 2035 across the continent, European carmakers would lose out to their rivals in the US and Asia who already lead on battery production.

By 2024, the report’s authors forecast that in Germany the cost of ownership for an electric car – including buying and fuelling it – would be the same as a conventional petrol or diesel model.

The bank said the shift to electric will be underpinned by falling battery costs.

Motorists’ concerns over “range anxiety” will also evaporate in the 2020s, ING said, as the distance between charges goes from the 100-150 miles of most models today to 400 miles and above in the next decade.
Tony Seba, an economist at Stanford University in the US who has published research on the cars, said: “Our findings clearly indicate that essentially all vehicle miles travelled will be electric by 2040 [worldwide].

“The car industry faces an imminent technology disruption by AEVs [autonomous electric vehicles] in the early 2020s. Even without autonomous technology, the internal combustion engine car industry will have been long decimated by 2040.”

Three Questions

Assuming this ambitious plan hits reality, where will all the electricity to charge the batteries come from?

Assuming a battery charge will last 400 miles, up from the current 150, is that range really long enough? Here’s a quick calculation: at 70MPH the longest one could drive would be 5.7 hours.

What is the recharge time?

I suppose battery-changing stations could theoretically work. So could a car swapping scheme, assuming no one owns their own car.

Even if the report is one-third-accurate, major disruptive forces in the auto industry are in play.

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I’m not sure about the “at night” theory. If we were just talking passenger cars, maybe. But if it is every single transport system, then there is going to be an issue that I’m going to guess someone will “require” more taxpayer largess to fix.

Due to various “Green Energy” pushes, electricity in California now costs 50% more than the rest of the nation. These measures are also making electricity supplies in California unstable. For instance a black out in LA last week

Wow, you really drank the Kool-Aid. If everyone goes electric, the current grid structure and generation capacity will not be sufficient … unless we all ride buses, which is where this is probably going under Agenda 21 … assuming any of us are allowed to go anywhere. or to live, for that matter (they always tell us how Earth is not sustainable with more than half-a-billion-or-so people.

Central power plant generation and transmission to vehicle recharge points is less energy efficient than current internal combustion engine environment.

New power plants in CA won’t burn coal (gasp!) or oil, maybe not natgas. New nukes will take a looooong time to come on line. Solar based gen will probably have to be subsidized to power the subsidized electric fleet, ditto wind power. If most solar gen draw shifts to night then massive battery arrays will be required at power plants. Electric cars will need a double layer of subsidy, maybe triple when batteries are disposed.

I am confident that toxic, depleted batteries will be shipped out of CA, maybe pile them up in a toxic stew with nuke waste in Hanford WA or ship them to poor third world country and let 21st century ragpickers work them over.

When mass electric car adoption doesn’t happen due to structural cost/efficiency imbalances between them and I.C.E. cars, expect the elites who deign themselves the brightest and smartest in any room they’re in to mandate their use through legislation.

Exactly. Politicians did not have to subsidize computers to get people to buy them. Ditto cell phones, flat screen TVs or any other successful innovation. If and when people decide electric vehicles are superior to what they are using, they will buy without any need for subsidies. Politicians should stick to what they’re good at: taking bribes, texting pictures of body parts to underage girls and foaming at the mouth around election time.

You can’t have it both ways – if Californians are over taxed then they should have less money available for housing than in say, Bumfuck, WC where taxes are low. But California is notoriously expensive for housing even with the higher taxes. (A look into property taxes might adjust many people’s opinion about taxation in CA vs. many other places, but that is another topic).

Maybe L.A. is where the high paying jobs are and also is somewhere people want to live. If L.A. was a hell hole then the rich wouldn’t want to live there, so top end prices would weaken. If poor people couldn’t afford to live there then rents wouldn’t be where they are.

Personally, I can take L.A. or leave it – it doesn’t ring my bell, but then, like most Americans, I can choose pretty much where I want to live in the country, and so I do. I assume most people in L.A. and even Bumfuck, WC want to live where they do. If not, why don’t they just move?

Plenty of wealthy people chose to live on Antebellum cotton plantations. For many others, it was still kind of a hellhole. Yet laws, as always written enforced by governments for the benefit of the politically connected, prevented them from leaving. The same holds true today, although the mechanisms for totalitarian enforcement may be slightly better obfuscated. Obfuscation of tyranny is, after all, what Progressivism is all about.

With theft by inflation and regulation nationwide, there is very little opportunity to leave, for many of those stuck in LA who would want to. Since the theft has ensured virtually all purchasing power is controlled by a few “plantation owners,” the only jobs left, now consists of being their handmaidens. It’a extremely obvious on the ground: Previously, wealthy areas, like Santa Monica, were mostly bedroom communities, with distinct commuting patterns into business areas. Now, commuting is heavier into Santa Monica in the morning, as an ever growing stream of the indentured are being bussed in to serve food, clip toenails and give blowjobs to the anointed.

If people try to bolt for greener pastures and set up shop doing something useful, they are still forced to do business, and keep their earnings, in dollars. Which, no matter how many of those they make, the Fed easily can, hence will, print a hundredfold and hand it to banksters. Who will then buy raw land, materials inputs, regulatory authorities, and rulings wrt “Intellectual property” and land use laws, to tilt the deck in their favor.

And the poor wanna-get-away saps still have to play by laws designed by idiot politicians who thinks they are doing anyone a favor by “soliciting input from industry experts” when writing legislation. AKA asking Goldman Sachs executives what the proper banking regulation should be, and then be equally surprised every time that everyone else get poorer and poorer, yet bank executives, despite all the “expert” opinion that went into the “clever” legislation, always seem to make out well…..

If the country was genuinely free (government intrusion into your life around where it was for someone in LA during the last great American presidency, Jefferson’s), you would undoubtedly be right. Noone would put up with the nonsense, and would just raise their middle finger, leave the banksters, lawyers, bureaucrats and other leeches desperate to insert themselves into the lives of others, to print their own money and sue and regulate eachother. Without paying any more attention to the idiots than most pay to a bug: Swat it if it gets too close and annoying, otherwise don’t bother with it.

But that’s not the LA, nor the USA, that people are faced with today. No matter where they go, the leeches follow. As that’s what leeches, like mosquitoes do. And when you’re banned from procuring properly effective bug spray, it’s hard for the average non-Somali to do much about it.

You need to keep at least enough earnings in dollars to pay taxes. And to pay suppliers. And employees. All of whom also need dollars to pay taxes. As well as their suppliers etc…. And so forth down the line…. And, the same applies to your customers. Rendering it extremely difficult to simply drop it all, use gold and Bitcoin, and forget fiat ever existed.

With taxation as high as it is now, this makes it a de facto necessity to be highly exposed to dollar debasement. Which is kind of how debasers want it, as otherwise why would anyone bother?

Well, if California is the winner in the next generation of auto companies, then maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all.

The two biggest opportunities for disruption in the auto markets are electric cars and self driving.

California, and much more importantly, Californian companies, are investing on both of these. This may, or may not work out, but what future industries is Arkansas leading in? Or Ohio? Or, and remember we are talking about the auto industry here, Michigan?

There is no automotive sector “winner” in electrification of cars. As the electric parts are commodities that anyone can build. Hence contribute nothing to profits. The value add will be the non electric parts, that are actually hard to do right (crash structures etc). Just like it is today.

With the exception that the battery sector will take the place of ICE manufacturers in the value equation. And even CA-centric Tesla, got the heck out of Cali for their battery operation. So the workforce and infrastructure that grows up around that effort, will be in Nevada. Assuming Asian companies and plants, possibly with German/European involvement, doesn’t render it noncompetitive from the get go.

As far as “self driving” goes, CA definitely have the most obviously capable workforce to do the software/AI development. But costs are sky high. Most of the hardware components will have to brought in from abroad. And traditionally, ditto for many of the top engineers. Who, as software is becoming a bigger industry in other parts of the world as well, have less reasons to pile themselves in top of each other in overpriced roach infested ratholes, for the benefit of zoning law riding rent seekers than they did before.

I agree that self-driving, all-electric, and hybrid tech as it relates to vehicles may not be the huge winner that many countries are looking for. This is primarily because so many countries are promoting this development, that there will in fact, be no clear winners. However, if your country completely avoids it, then you will be the loser. Kind of a Catch-22.

Just as is the case with many other high profile, highly visible, national pride type industries, there is, and likely will always be, persistent overcapacity in autos. Very little pricing power. Very low return on capital. Hence, it doesn’t take too much market interference, before malinvestment wipes out what little actual return there is.

As a flipside, the massive net economywide returns from autos, mostly accrue to their users. Meaning, as long as cars are available as cheaply and easily as possible to all those that benefit from them, it doesn’t really matter all that much, exactly where they are built.

Electric bicycles have an efficient design. DC generator, wire to the wheel, DC wheel motor. For automobiles a small Diesel engine to drive the generator with an auxiliary battery should suffice. Diesel electric trains use wire to the electric wheel motors as well. This is the time tested design for efficiency. Auto makers are not up to speed yet.

A car uses a tiny portion of its energy to transport the passenger – 4-10%. The car being electric doesn’t alter the fact. It actually makes it less efficient. A gasoline car pulls oxygen from air, which is half the reagents. Air may appear weightless but it isn’t as an average car will pull weight of 1- 2 passengers out of the atmosphere when it drives. Additionally, with every mile driven, the fuel tank gets liter and that contributes to efficiency.

Electrochemical cells are a whole different story. They have to contain both reagents and do not rely on combustion/oxidation. Many extra components have to be added to make batteries safe – heat transfer elements, insulators etc – none of the things a simple aluminum gas tank requires. And a dead battery weighs nearly as much as a charged one.

Electric bikes are the only economically viable form of battery-powered EV transportation merely due to the fact that the machine is typically liter than the passenger and doesn’t haul around as much dead weight as a sedan or an SUV.

Electric trucks have one benefit as they can fit more batteries to achieve longer travel distances, but that doesn’t negate the fact that battery is not the intended payload. It’s dead weight.

Wasting electricity on electric cars is idiocy.

And for air travel there are zero options to liquid hydrocarbons. I remember reading somewhere that if airplanes were electric, then Frankfurt airport alone, at the current load, would consume more energy than entire Germany.

Give it up Julia. Nobody listens to engineering reality anymore. Marketing geniuses such as the redoubtable person behind the Tesla company trump engineering sense.
This is a financial blog – not a technical one.

Which is why, the only reasonable way to fully electrify the automotive fleet, is to make the highways themselves “hot.” So you only need small batteries for local hops, while power to propel you down the interstate is pulled from the infrastructure itself. Along with charging the smaller batteries, so they are “always” topped up.

Other than that, the “hot” to charge the smaller, local hop, batteries, will be provided by an ICE. IOW, a plug in hybrid. Which is remarkably efficient, as optimized ICEs aren’t _that_ far behind “power station to delivery grid to electric motor” efficiency, when operated at a steady highway load. Instead, it’s the city portion that kills mpg for ICEs. But that is exactly where electrics shine the brightest.

I’m not crazy about the rebate thing but 50 years ago the tax breaks for oil exploration was a political hot button. And how much money is appropriated to the Department of War to keep the oil flowing freely from the Middle East? Maybe we should cut other taxes by $500 billion (to pick a number) and raise the gasoline tax to generate $500 billion worth of revenue to pay for our pick up truck gas guzzlers

My friends here in Montana resemble that remark. We moved from large cities and the usual Lexus, Mercedes, BMW driving set, to our 4-door pickup trucks and our wives SUV’s for the weekly trips to Home Depot and Costco. Got to have transport for the projects around the mini-ranch and four months of snow-packed roads. And we ain’t going electric.

Californians always ask for Federal funds after it blows up. Never fear though, because they won’t need electric lights soon… they will be lit by moonbeam. If you think of where that big crack is, you know God is real.

I did not complete a sentence above in my comment above. Here is a rewrite:

In California the politicians are eliminating traffic lanes on main thoroughfares that are totally congested with traffic and replacing them with bicycle lanes which will only exacerbate the congestion and add an extra hour or more to commuter drive times during peak hours. Stupid is as stupid does. It’s impractical and laughable to believe that people leave their cars at home and ride bicycles to their workplace for a multitude of reasons. This is America for God sakes. Not Shanghai!

Seeing as I have enjoyed having a bit of a laugh over these posts I figure it fair to also give a straight opinion. This is from someone who had a member of the household a mechanic (so no illusions there), has lived in city, country, 1st world, 4th world etc.. I have been following the trials and tribulations of EV from the 80s out of interest also, watched how inbuilt redundancy and part replacement was introduced to auto, advent of clinical repairshops where the owners guess that in the near future they will be electricians…have been thinking this for a while but still aren’t except for the modern computerised system controls.

At basics you have a cart with a power source. ICE is very simple, you can make it complex but it is very simple at base. The energy source can be made, stored, transported easily. The engine can scale output without great cost, e.g. to run AC, pull loads in low gear… because of fuel capacity.

It is frankly stupid to think you will replace that with a battery system. Any overuse or underuse will see degradation or demonstrate over complexity of the unit. That is not even considering the logistics of widescale charging.

That said, there are environments where it would work. For simple regular personal transport in urban or suburban setting it would be adequate, not better ( except noise/local polution). It is untested (logistically/endurance/safety/cost) so talk of wide adoption is premature. This would be 1st world urban, or a segment of ‘forward fixated’ emerging markets who want to demonstrate how to spend and be modern.

The French are… OK, there may be children reading this… the whole country runs off EV! So people keep their old ICE engine under the stairs for if there is a power outage, or a shed full of AA batteries. Imagine grid failure… lights out for a week, a month… there will be no more wars right, no large sabotage, because we have to charge our EV… right? We also like our liberty rationed by power providers and will bow to the government energy guru and his/her plans, or we have a bricked vehicle. EMP… oh dear, 50 million vehicles are fried. It is too stupid for words to impose a national obligation like this.

EVs are a branch of transport evolution that are very promising for certain uses, if a US state wants to spend to create a reality for that direction, fine by me as I will be the interested onlooker who does not have to pay to learn. The French, or EU pushing to ban ICE? I don’t think society will allow it, so for now just more annoying politicians people have to watch over their shoulders instead of planning ahead.

Wow, you are so full of blind hate you can’t see that the left coast is the only part of America left that actual believes in the future and taking big risks – you know like the whole of America used to do before it was taken over by a bunch of whining losers called politicians.

Actually, Mass leads the innovation index. Having two of the top U.S. Universities next door to one another has been very helpful for them. Of course someone on Meds will very shortly appear and tell me how MIT sucks and only idiots go there.

I applaud any state that promotes innovation, though I’m not in favour of subsidizing it. If the US does not continue to innovate, then many countries will pass it by. America will lose its place as a world leader in many areas. I believe that Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau is trying to take advantage of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies to attract the highly skilled young immigrants that Trump rejects to Canada. Very smart of him, eh?

The hatred is a result of decades of political polarization, which works to the benefit of politicians. It began in, hmm, Rome?Babylonia? This is similar to the soccer hooliganism you see at times. Also, don’t forget “internet”. It’s a safe place to vent. I wonder if it’s therapeutic? 🙂

I really do wonder what “big risks” Californians are taking these days…….. Robbing it’s own citizens to help make life less risky for some billionaire and a gaggle of Sand Hill Road banksters and ambulance chasers, somehow doesn’t seem to qualify…

Especially since that robbery goes along with zoning laws making it darned near impossible for anyone to take real risks, as anything less than a steady, month in month out $10K plus benefits, results in immediate starvation.

What CA does have, is a big media industry. Which is above average at drumming up hype. Which is why sitting back and having the government guarantee you $5K/month for a roach motel, from some poor Indian dude who may actually be trying to take some risk, is being touted as “risk taking.”

The place is a nanny state now. With the government protecting the protected and connected, at the expense of everyone else. A far, far cry from the “run your boat up on the beach, hike into the unknown with nothing and prospect for Gold” that got it going. The latter would be illegal now, you see.

If that is what California is today, then that is disappointing. I personally know quite a few tech workers who have been attracted to work in California and have no intention of leaving. The only complaint I ever hear about, is the high cost of living. Which sounds exactly like friends in London, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Unfortunately, high cost of living is a side effect of high wages and good opportunity.

High cost of living is, always and everywhere, nothing but a direct result of restrictions on suppliers to compete for the provision of goods. Absent such restrictions, all costs fall to, at most, cost of provision. Which, given ongoing efficiency improvements, is always decreasing.

Let anyone build anything anywhere anytime without asking the local junta permission, and you’ll have cheap houses for everyone, forever. Along with the greatest “economic stimulus” package ever put into place (imagine the sheer number of well paying, solid, middle class jobs in construction….), for those who are into that sort of thing…..

Ditto healthcare. If anyone can provide any service, or sell any drug, to anyone anywhere anytime, treatment will get very cheap very fast.

The only reason people pay $5mill for 2000 square feet, is because they, and anyone else, are banned from building 3000 square feet next door for $150K. Not due to some magic “opportunity” that they may have.

If you come to California, you will quickly realize that, like everywhere else, the things that are expensive, are exactly those things that are the most regulated: Housing, healthcare, education, insurance…….. While all those things that are less restricted, are no more expensive here than anywhere else.

There are still plenty of “good jobs” here for tech workers. It’s Silicon Valley, after all. But it’s starting to look mighty hollow, if you take away the easy money and inflation that is propping up the ever growing share of “tech” companies that are not making any money. And likely never will.

More alarmingly, a huge share of those companies, are not working on anything all that “high tech” anymore. 20-30 years ago, viewed from Silicon Valley, looking at the rest of the world’s information technology sectors, were almost like looking at stone age cave drawings.. While nowadays, the insane amount of easy fresh print, just gives rise to get-rich-quick schemes with little to no fundamental technical advances underpinning them. Instead, Just enough me-to hype to last 2 years, hoping for a windfall buyout.

Anyway, I’m sure I come across as pretty whiney and doom-and-gloomy. Things aren’t that bad here. The weather is nice, jobs are plentiful and high paying for most graduates, and this is still the undisputed center for information technology, as well as many other high tech sectors. But things are moving in the wrong direction. At an accelerating rate. And given that, no matter how high and mighty one is when one starts out, sooner or later going backwards will start hurting for real.

Big risk nowadays is putting money on the table, or listening to someone in a plush office, or making promises you might not get away with. Etc. Might even lose the reputation you spoofed, the ultimate failure – social relegation, only spam in the inbox 😦 .

Sad part is that they are trading off what had to be fought and slaved for to establish, for something ‘even better’ where ‘everyone gets to be part of the experiment ain’t it great’.

If a technology needs taxpayers money to succeed, then it’s a crap technology. Combustion engine triumphed over horse with zero government money transfer and very little brainwashing PR hype. People just saw that it’s better.

If electric cars are so great they will win the market sooner or later anyway, so they don’t need subsidies. If they’re not, then it’s a crime to waste taxpayers money on it. Simple as that.

You mean like the Internet? That government funded failure you are using to complain about government funded failures? Or lots of primary research that results in creating new companies to profit from it?

Yeah, the left coast really makes a lot of mistakes. But then, you only hit home runs if you swing at the ball. While some people are sitting smugly on the sidelines pontificating, the left coast is actually doing something – remember when that used to be all of America?

Some of the left coast’s ‘mistakes’:

Apple
Microsoft
Alphabet
Amazon
Facebook

Some of these mistakes have been so bad they have become the most valuable companies in the World.

@monosynaptic: Apple was mostly genius. Actually, most of the technology in the original Apple was pioneered by Xerox in the seventies. Steve Jobs asked them for their files and was given cupboards full of documentation for free.

Lots of MIT and CMU grads living in silicon valley. Could have just as easily be working in Boulder CO or even Falls Church VA. Just happens that Shockely and later the traitorous eight happened to like the area, so that’s where the VC firms are.

“(Shockley) selected the location in Mountain View, near Palo Alto, California.[6] The place did not prove very successful: Shockley’s colleagues at Bell Labs and RCA refused to move to a rural location with no long-distance phone service.[10] The vast majority of semiconductor-related companies and professionals were based on the East Coast…”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

Parts of California do have a smog situation, so I can understand why they want electric cars in their major cities. Vehicles generate about half the smog producing emissions in major cities. They will have to import electricity from nearby sparsely populated states to tame the smog using electric cars though.

Electric cars would be impractical in some other states. Things are too far apart.

Simple hybrids, which turn off the engine when braking or stopped are a more practical alternative to all-electric. They are more affordable than all electric for most people and don’t require any change in infrastructure.

And, as (if) battery tech improves, they can gradually become more and more “electric.” While allowing those who drive mainly highway, to focus their money/effort on cars with a better ICE portion, while those driving mainly city, can focus on the battery/charging side.

The whole either/or mentality, serves very few optimally. Flexibility is always a good thing. For end users, at least. Not necessarily for governments, and those seeking to profiteer from the rules and laws they can be coaxed into writing and enforcing.

@ekim — other states with big cities addressed their smog problems with subways and regional train systems.

California stages lots of protests and TALKS about the environment non-stop — very French in their thinking. Whine endlessly and expect someone else to do the work to fix things. That is why the rest of America has trouble relating to socialist California — CA’s thinking isn’t like most of the USA.

Other states, even left leaning places like Boston, are more American. They complained and then built “the T” (above ground subway transit). American’s talk about problems and then do something about it.

Boston’s problem (like many other US cities), is the welfare system in Boston proper made the middle class want to move out to the suburbs. So they will need to build more regional trains, and/or regional bus systems, and/or extend the T-lines further into the ‘burbs

NYC has the same issue — socialist crime waves (municipal workers and gang members) pushed the middle class into New Jersey, Westchester County, CT, and Long Island. Pathway trains, LIRR, and Metro North train systems haven’t kept up with middle class flight — and Gotham is already pushing to fix their neglected train systems.

California will subsidize Tesla and Elon Musk Ego LLC — then you will discover that your 6 lane highways clogged with electric car traffic jams, and you won’t have any place to park them once you get into a city.

I doubt that will matter. California is bankrupt and teetering on a Venezuelan type civil war.

Buses and trains are imperfect solutions. I tried both bus and train to work when I started out. I had to wait for 3 different buses, and it took over an hour to get to work. I also arrived 45 minutes before my shift started, and had to wait around. The train was about the same, as I had to transfer to 2 buses.

Then I bought a car, and it was 20 minutes from my driveway to the parking lot. I arrived on time. Most people will buy a car if they can.

Yep, poorly designed bus/train systems are as bad as poorly designed highways.

Then let the government unions run the buses / trains and you are lucky you only had to change trains 3 times. Government run services are run for the big government unions that Californians love so much — they aren’t run for your benefit.

Anyway, if you prefer to sit in a traffic jam on a giant 6 lane highway — sitting on top of a lithium battery instead of on top of a gasoline tank — lets just say its a distinction without a meaningful difference.

Except that lithium sitters will have paid 2-3x as much as the gasoline folks — and that is after taxpayer subsidies.

Regarding the fact that Macron and EU elite is creating a new totalitarian state, I am against anything they suggest. If electric cars would be such a wonderful thing, people would buy them without forcing them to do so.

It’ll never work in rural areas where cars are actually needed. In cities where a car is optional, yes it could work.
Wait a sec, don’t all the metropolitan elites live in cities??? Who on earth would come up with such a proposal? Oh, right…

There is no money in rural areas, so who cares what they need? This is a capitalist society, or are you advocating that car companies in the future to be forced by the government to produce money losing ICE cars for a niche market? Isn’t that just what you are whining about right now?

Let the market decide, then, when a bunch of cry babies in Bumfuck, WC want subsidized cars they can pitch it to their own politicians to skew the markets for them.

In a society where all spoils are distributed by legislation, of course there won’t be much money in areas where those writing and influencing legislation generally doesn’t live.

The wealth that the banksters, lawyers, politicians and rent seekers in PCtopias are enjoying, OTOH, are to a much larger extent created outside of the cities where the theft beneficiaries reside.

So the kind of efficiency and low, competitive cost calculation that is important to those still trying to eke out a living there, does matter even to the leeches preying on them. Lest there be nothing left for the leeches to steal. Tough to live in splendor off of the cotton business, if you’re forced to bus your slaves around in Rolls Royces, after all.

The wealth, since the dawn of capitalism, had been created and destroyed then recreated in a better form in cities rather than in rural areas. We have had to have socialist programs such as rural electrification to force the wealthy parts of the country to subsidize the poorer parts. I’m OK with that to an extent, but it sort of gets tiring to get lectured by the takers that the wealth producers aren’t giving them enough. The political system, in particular the Senate, but the gerrymandering in the House, bleeds the cities to enrich the rural counties – let’s stop this government redistribution of wealth, or at least let’s stop the whining from poor rural counties that are bleeding the rest of us dry and now are expecting money from us for their opioid addiction problems.

What you speak of, may well have been true back in the age of (at least sorta-kinda) capitalism. Nowadays, not so much.

With the creation of the Fed, (more correctly, even earlier: Since the developments began, that led to the Fed being created in the first place), wealth redistribution has been largely a one way street. From those furthest from the Fed, to those closest to it.

You’d have to be pretty darned dense, to fall for the sales pitch that a bunch of tax feeders in DC are somehow “creating value.” That is then being taken from them and handed to places where people grow food, pump oil and build stuff. Ditto for banksters in New York.

Not to mention believe that some yahoo sitting idly on his rear as the Fed prints money that goes into pumping up his poppeti vaijue, while various governments bans anyone else from supplying housing next door at less inflated rates, is somehow “creating value.”

The power will come from plants operating typically at night. Look at a daily demand curve for electricity and you’ll discover there is enormous excess capacity in the system. Also, Look up peak load base loads

I’m not a big fan of government investing in specific *companies*, but I am a fan of governments investing in infrastructure that enables *markets*. Like all investments, there is a downside risk, but, think of it as investing in an index EFT instead of a specific stock.

So, considering “infrastructures” are built by specific companies, what you are saying is that you are not in favor of un-PC cronyism that’s in-your-face and obvious. But are perfectly OK with it, as long as it is lightly obfuscated and phrased in the Newspeak flavor of the day? How progressive of you!

You are way too smart for me – I was trying to say that common infrastructure like roads etc. are good investments for government, but picking particular companies isn’t.

In between generic infrastructure and specific companies are vertical markets or sub-markets such as electric cars. Here there may be a common good benefit that is worthwhile to encourage, but in this grey area thar be dragons.

Where will the power come from? Back of envelope musings, a typical car will go 15,000 miles per year, or around 40 per day. A tesla model S requires 33kwh to go 100 miles, so that’s 13kwh/day per car. A typical household currently uses about 30kwh/day electricity, so with two cars in a house that almost doubles the electricity usage. Doesn’t seem possible.

First, I am not a big proponent of all-electric cars till the cost/benefit improves (when, not if). Second, I don’t think there will be a problem supporting the number of all-electric vehicles with the current and future generating stations and electric grid. Most charging will take place at night when there is lots of excess capacity. Every electrical “appliance” we use is becoming more efficient each year so we actually are beginning to use less electricity in many households. Plus, I don’t think that all-electric vehicles will be adopted to the degree that some are anticipating. So I don’t think it will be a problem.

US labor enjoys atypical prosperity due to the post WWII monopoly on manufacturing. Those days are gone. US labor is worth no more than Chinese or Mexican labor, in some cases worth less. Fewer and fewer Americans can afford an automobile. Autonomous Uber is the future of transportation for many. Those who are handy with electronics and mechanics can afford to own their own vehicles. I doubt electric autonomous Uber will ever be as economical as owner maintained internal combustion. However spendthrift people will always prefer low monthly rental or ten dollar Uber trips to the grocer than pay a thousand dollar per year ownership cost.

I agree and I have made similar comments before. When US manufacturers were only competing against each other (ie autos, steel) and unions had leverage, the typical US worker was paid well.

Those days are gone, as today your manufacturers have to compete globally, and as a result, unions have no more leverage. So wages have to drop in order to compete.

The well paid worker of the future is one with the necessary skills, working in the growth industries of the future, who can get the high wages because their skills are in demand and they can negotiate their pay from a position of strength (unions are disappearing and probably won’t matter much in the future).

Successful countries will be the ones with the highest skilled labour. (that’s why I mentioned earlier that Canada’s Trudeau is making a smart move to attract highly skilled young immigrants that Trump wants to reject).

No, Trump proposes a 90 day suspension of travel from a handful of countries which do not have a trustworthy vetting process in place. He also proposes a wall between the US and Mexico. Neither of these proposals is likely keeping top-notch engineering talent out of the country. The “highly skilled young immigrants” that our economy needs are mostly Asian and Indian. Muslims and Mexicans, with all due respect, are not particularly famous for their engineering skills.

Perhaps I misunderstand Trumps policy (as he changes it frequently). I was under the impression that many American tech companies were complaining that he was restricting their ability to attract highly skilled tech workers from all over the world. Wasn’t that the reason that Musk quit his advisory council?
Also, what was the reason for Trudeau’s announcement? Public relations?

1. The power system isn’t a problem. The charging question has been studied to death. It isn’t a problem. Most charging is at work or home at times of the day with plenty of transmission, distribution, and generation capacity.

2&3. Range concerns are tied to charging speed. Existing chargers will give you 200 miles of range per hour of charging. New equipment will charge at about 500 miles per hour. Plan to stop for 20 minutes every several hours.

The Chevy Bolt is a 240 mile range car you can recharge in an hour that you can buy today for $38k. They’re fun to drive.

The Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid is a minivan that covers typical daily use with a battery – 40 miles, I think. For long trips, it has an engine.

Your next car might not be electric. The one after it probably will be.

Within 2 years there will be fewer emissions due to an economic crash, not to green energy efforts. The company I work for just instituted a hiring freeze and early retirement buyout even though it has too few people to perform the existing work. Others in the aerospace industry are doing the same. My co-workers are NOT planning on buying electric vehicle or hybrids. They want gas PICK-UP TRUCKS so they can move out of their liberal state as soon as they retire.

Governments never act sanely. They could accomplish the same thing by instead taxing petroleum, and have a positive revenue, rather than a negative one. Or, better, add a petroleum tax, and a general tax cut, so that it is revenue neutral.

I predict California will have regular, on-going, massive urban riots — if not full out Caracus (Venezuela) level civil war — before electric cars take off

Yes, the technology for electric cars is close. But they aren’t practical, and there are much lower cost ways for the middle class to get around. Within gated retirement communities, people already drive “golf carts” around — golf carts that cost $15K before the old farts trick them out. They aren’t going to spend $40K on an overpriced political statement. Beyond that, electric cars aren’t practical.

Meanwhile, socialism is having the same impact on California that is has everywhere else. Economic suffering, massive wealth inequality, and shortages caused by government robbing the productive to reward the lazy.

The future of California is heavily fortified fortresses for the rich, surrounded by riots and civil war — just like socialist countries in south America (and for EXACTLY the same reasons). Same dumb ideas in, same civil war out.

The liberals in Sacramento and all the other progressive cities in California do not care about budgets or math in general. Tesla has done an amazing job getting where the are today on the welfare from the federal and state governments. I do not see how it is any different than Solyndra.

The socialists in Sacramento are no different than the socialists in Caracus Venezuela (who also ignored budgets and math). CA will have the same outcome.

Remember the last time Jerry Brown was CA governor? Heavily subsidized (if not “free”) college education in the UC system? The schools were awesome for a few years — because they had essentially unlimited spending… But property taxes went berserk — eventually resulting in Proposition 13, which froze some property taxes, and limited ALL property tax increases to (I think?) 2% annually.

This isn’t the first time these crazies have promised something for nothing, but they are starting from a much more precarious position this time. The state is essentially bankrupt already.

1. Assuming this ambitious plan hits reality, where will all the electricity to charge the batteries come from?

No problem. All the oil that is no longer burned in cars can be used in power plants to generate electricity. Either that, or solar panels can be used to charge the batteries at night when people are asleep. Oh, wait…

2. Assuming a battery charge will last 400 miles, up from the current 150, is that range really long enough? Here’s a quick calculation: at 70MPH the longest one could drive would be 5.7 hours.

No problem. Just multiply the amount of lithium required to make each battery by three or more and triple the weight of each battery or more. It’s not like lithium is a rare earth metal or batteries are really heavy. Oh, wait…

3. What is the recharge time?

No problem. Technologies like Tesla’s supercharger will deliver electricity at a rate of 390KW to future high capacity batteries, charging them to 60% capacity in 15 minutes. It’s not like anyone needs to use 100% of their rated driving range or worry about shortening very expensive battery life from quick charging. As for 390KW being equal to the peak delivery rate of about 80 homes in the US, that doesn’t matter. Load diversity evens everything out. It’s not like power plants cannot generate electricity ahead of time or that people refuel their cars all at once on the drive home. Oh, wait…

1. Wind is the cheapest energy source right now. Usually the wind blows more at night, complementing the sun. Balancing various sources of energy already works quite well in Europe, where grid failures are extremely rare. A huge percentage of new generation capacity comes from renewables, and there is a lot of new capacity on the boards. I am still hoping that nuclear/thorium clears the political obstacles. Of course expansion of the electrical grid will be necessary if people start using less fossil fuels (which get a B$500 annual subsidy, according to the IEA; and a total of Tr$5.3 free ride according to the IMF, if you include externalities: the real cost).
2. Lithium is very far from being a rare earth: it is the third entry of the periodic table after hydrogen and helium.It is quite plentiful in certain areas, like the Atacamba salt flats in Chile. Also lots in Australia, Bolivia, Afghanistan and other places. Known reserves amount to 2.55 × 10^10 kg. Battery technology still has many tricks up its sleeve. This cuts two ways: as the energy density goes up, weight goes down. A large part of the energy is now wasted lugging the battery around. Range problems will gradually succumb to new technology and business models (like leased batteries that you can swap charged and all, commoditized).
3. Obviously charging facilities will have to accomodate new demands. The grid in Europe is probably more amenable to solutions than the American grid (wires and transformers on wooden poles). The grid concept will probably be subject to many technical and business changes as it becomes more economical for many customers to go off grid, using energy directly without transmission, driving costs up for those remaining on the grid, giving incentives to go local as well.

Mass production and technological development will also change the cost equations over time. You are looking at this too much in terms of what is actual instead of what is possible.

1. Wind is certainly not cheapest when one takes into account sobering realities like average utilization of 20% and the fact that it cannot be relied upon to cover demand when needed, therefore 100% backup power must always be provided and paid for. A “subsidy” is taking money from one resource and paying for another with those funds. It is perverse to say that policy is equivalent to taxing fossil fuel resources more lightly than some people think they should be taxed.

3. “Obviously charging facilities will have to accommodate new demands. The grid in Europe is probably more amenable to solutions than the American Grid…” — Give me a break. In the US the average home has 10KW service. In Europe many homes have only 3KW service. There is a difference between accommodating new demand and having a complete lack of infrastructure to handle the task. Having electric charging stations in place of gas stations where each needs to have a 2.3 MW feeder to charge 6 cars simultaneously in a reasonable time is outrageous.

4. “You are looking at this too much in terms of what is actual instead of what is possible.” There are many things that are possible and are also uneconomic, unhelpful, bad policy. Forcing EVs down everyone’s throats is bad policy; just as growing corn to produce ethanol for fuel blending is bad policy. Make enough of those policy mistakes and everyone will be worse off.

I think Mish and others are making too much about the range of 500 miles. Seriously, how often do you drive 500 miles in one day? Me: once a year (well, twice with the return trip). And if they get the charge time down to 20 minutes, is that really terrible compared to 5 minutes to pump gasoline.
How many things really happen without some government support? Eisenhower interstate. Transcontinental railroad in the 19th century. The internet. Which doesn’t mean government is perfect. But neither is the private sector (which gave us hundreds of thousands of deaths from cancer caused by tobacco, with companies denying for years it was a dangerous product).

California has effectively become a one party state. Until Republicans figure out how to appeal to a broader segment of the voting public, Democratic politicians will set the political agenda. People and businesses who don’t like Jerry Brown and his cronies can always move to an other state. As far as I am concerned, the last effective Republicans who did a lot for large numbers of state residents were Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann and their real estate tax cutting Proposition 13. It has held up better than I thought it would.

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